suggested to the priest.

He smote his palms together. "I am old," he mourned. "Else I could
never have forgotten. At Meudon, of course. It was at a meeting of
Jacobites. An exile named Starling--he was a commanding man, my
daughter--was their leader. How did you know?"

She stood there in her Indian dress of skins with a forest around her
and talked of courts.

"I remembered that you were in Paris three years ago," she explained,
"and that our king--yes, our king, Father Nouvel, although a king in
exile--talked sometimes with you. There was often one of your order at
the meetings at Meudon."

The father looked at her. "I could almost think that age and
loneliness have undone my mind," he said slowly. "You talk of kings
and courtiers. Who are you?"

I waited, perhaps more eagerly than the priest himself, for her reply.
None came. I thought she gave a flitting look toward me, and so I
shrugged my shoulders and thrust myself again into the priest's thought.

"If we were kings, courtiers, and Jacobites all in one," I said as
airily as might be in view of my aching muscles, "the titles would yet
clink dully as leaden coins, travel-worn as we are. Can you marry us
this evening, Father Nouvel?"

He looked at me keenly, not altogether pleased. "And you are"--he
asked.